bara

interim

2010-02-08T23:07:00.002Z

In the interim, I have taught a lot of classes where I got to talk about surrealism, feminism, poetry, the semi-colon (also known as the king of punctuation marks), why women in the 18th century used lead to powder their faces, how to construct a thesis statement, why René Magritte is the most excellent painter of them all (this may be subjective).

I have thought about my thesis and had a very successful meeting with my supervisor. I've called home and called Z. and written emails and letters. I've written poems. I've written part of a film script. I've written some thesis. I've gone to a couple of workshops. I've made travel plans (Paris in May!).

I've gone to Bakewell and Buxton by bus, and watched the stunning beauty of the Peak District roll by the window. I've had tea with the Birdwoman. I've been so even-keel. I've enjoyed watching the light change now that it is late winter. I caught it just as I like it--light from the west, dark in the east, bright blue above, red-orange bricks that typify this city--the other day.

playlist

2010-02-02T22:32:00.006Z

Ideal playlist for singing (links to videos):

1. Quelqu'un m'a dit, by Carla Bruni.
2. Gatekeeper, by Feist.
3. Ta p'tite flamme, by Amélie-les-Crayons.
4. La noyée, by Serge Gainsbourg.
5. Casimir Pulaski Day, by Sufjan Stevens.
6. To Build a Home, by The Cinematic Orchestra.
7. Amen, by Jolie Holland.
8. Don't Watch Me Dancing, by Little Joy.
9. The Littlest Bird, by the Be Good Tanyas, but ideally with someone to sing the harmony.
10. Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen, but maybe a bit closer to this K.D. Lang version.
11. Say a Little Prayer for You, by Aretha Franklin.
12. Winter, by Tori Amos.

bunnies * konijntjes * shop * winkel

2010-02-01T09:51:00.002Z

Guess who'll be in the shop today?

Meet Kaatje, Loetkin, Maartje, Elleke, Geraard, and Lien.

They're all made of cashmere and backed with the same fabric as their legs, with hand-embroidered faces and their particular personalities. Each konijntje comes with a name tag (not shown).

Last day to buy in time for Valentine's Day is tomorrow, if you live in the US, Thursday in Europe, Monday of next week for the UK. I can't guarantee arrival before the holiday due to the vagaries of the Post here, but those are my guidelines.

color to end the month

2010-01-31T21:19:00.003Z

After several weeks of grey it was finally bright this weekend. On Friday I taught in Leicester, then took a walk and went to the printshop. Beeston was also bright in the sun.

St. Verde.

Angela Liguori.

a people's history

2010-01-28T14:19:00.004Z

I read Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States while I was living in France. It was so absorbing I had to consciously pace myself so I wouldn't finish it too quickly. By the end, I knew I wanted to study for a PhD, because I wanted to make work that would make other people feel like that book made me feel: alive. Hopeful. Powerful. I felt an immense love for the strikers who were brave enough, unarmed, to call out 'Cowards!' when the police charged them; the people who risked humiliation, violence, harm, and death to change the way our political system works. And I felt despairing that those things felt like history sometimes. I am not always good at sticking up for what I think is just but that book made me want to be better.

Howard Zinn died yesterday. You can see him speaking and others reading from the People's History here. It's about an hour, but it is worth it. So beautiful, stirring. Overwhelming. Thank you, Professor Zinn, for reminding me that just a few people acting together can change things.

on saturday

2010-01-27T23:28:00.003Z

We went to Rugby (the town, not the sport, although that's where we get rugby). Fran thought I meant rugby when I meant Rugby so she was surprised about halfway there. Oh, that's why you wore those clothes! Ha. We went to the gallery where my work is and then walked around the town. I had been there before, this summer, to see the Museum of Everyday Life.

Earlier that morning, terrible but joyously noisy breakfast with entire Beeston contingent, charity-shop shopping (where I found a really beautiful blue midcentury ceramic pitcher for £3), and walking in the brief sunshine. I love mornings. And my life.

Best part of the day was telling some (12-year-old) kids who tried to harass us that we were from an (imaginary) republic where there were no cars, and confusing them when they tried to explain (or point cars out) by calling them 'cows'. And our names began with a letter that was unpronounceable in English. And that we'd walked to Rugby--but very quickly, on the motorway, so it only took 20 minutes. Also gleaned the valuable information from said lads that ASDA is indeed Rugby's best candy shop. Out of the mouths of babes, folks.

recommend.

2010-01-25T15:14:00.002Z

(An unrelated drawing of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis fulfils your recommended daily sketch allowance.)

Poetry readers, writers: I am in urgent need of your recommendations for single texts (NOT anthologies) to teach to intermediate/advanced adult students of poetry. I'm teaching a workshop this summer that will be a reading-as-writers (i.e., literature-based) workshop, and I'd just love to hear what other people would teach. I'm going to choose two books (maybe three); it's a two-week (6-day) course.

Right now my brainstorm list includes My Life by Lyn Hejinian; Glass, Irony and God, by Anne Carson; Residence on Earth by Neruda; Some Ether by Nick Flynn. I'd like books that are challenging formally or thematically but that students who aren't extremely familiar with recent writing could still enjoy (for that reason, the Hejinian is lower on my list). I'm thinking of structuring the course around the construction of the self.

Let the discussion begin. What text would you love to teach? What text inspired you (and/or still does)? What text do you wish you'd been taught? And why, why, why? All suggestions very welcome.

teaching

2010-01-21T22:29:00.002Z

Tomorrow morning I start the first regular teaching I've had since I left France. This marks the end of the luxurious period of only-reading-only-writing-only-making of the PhD. Where are we going?

I am sure there will still be trains, also the ocean. Paris. Flowers in the spring. And poems, photobooths, the birdwoman, adventures, all the things I like. And things I don't know I like yet, like 18th-century British history, commuting, and grownup clothes. And and and. This is why I like teaching--my students remind me to think about how much there is to know and how exciting it is to start to know it.

and then there were...

2010-01-20T10:29:00.003Z

Well, you know what happens when you leave rabbits in a room together. There are five 'vlaamse konijntjes' (Flemish bunnies) here now, and more on the way. Probably in the shop around the end of next week, in time for Valentine's Day.

grain

2010-01-17T17:41:00.002Z

The grain guarantees the mediation and points me beyond the representation (the photograph) and to the Real (which, despite all postmodern tendencies, I find I do believe in, in my fashion). This is the moon at 5:15 p.m. today. Still a little light in the western sky; I can't believe how fast winter is going this year. I love this flickr group: The Archival Moon and Waiting.

Tomorrow I go back to the library, where I'm writing about textual ontology and reading books about art history. On Friday I start teaching again, as a lecturer in Leicester. Birds, rabbits, some Dutch, some French, some cakes, and probably lots of photographs in the interim. How are you?

MR HAT

2010-01-15T00:00:00.002Z

Has adventures. But he is not the only one. You can still email me (ohbara at gmail cot com) or leave a comment if you want to participate in the project I'll begin in March. You need to have access to a public transport network that gives you a ticket, a digital camera, and to be willing to send me a photo (I'll tell you of what) and the ticket.

Full details will come to participants in March (and when they do, your utter discretion is necessary). If you know of people who might like to play along--especially from Asia, Central America, South America, Africa, and Europe--please pass my contact details along.

For now, look at her and this and this.

the story of making things

2010-01-13T10:22:00.001Z

Pictures of art I love and the story of why I like it (and so why I make art), for the Belgian for Christmas, You can see them here.

there is a light and it never goes out

2010-01-12T14:10:00.001Z

I didn't listen to the Smiths in high school. Or university. Or graduate school, the first time. I discovered them in April, after two years in the UK and in the aftermath of a cataclysmic breakup. They are so absolutely English to me. The ennui, the feeling of being caught somewhere small. The 'do I dare disturb'-ness of it (yes, I know Eliot was American). The ironic posturing. The sincerity buried underneath it all. The bleakness. The beauty in the damp, dark, watery, days: there is a light and it never goes out. Listening to this song makes me nostalgic for an adolescence that doesn't belong to me.

no unified aesthetic here, I'm afraid

2010-01-11T12:50:00.000Z

(I love having a camera that works. Thank you, Jonathan.)

I didn't realise Mieke Willems was two people, or that their shop is in Antwerp. Now I know. The second piece of information is more pertinent to me. Next time I'm in Belgium I'll go there and see the shop.

Drawing as both pushing away (pencil on paper) and pulling near, says WJT Mitchell. That's how I feel about very spare aesthetics (like MW above, or Fine Little Day, or, Martha, or Camilla Engman, or 88). I wish I could do it but somehow I always end up with a riot of pink, green, yellow, flowers everywhere, postcards balanced on pictures, a gingham tablecloth.

Sometimes I feel like I am not serious enough!

How could that possibly be.

Recent find--more of that spareness thing I want but can't: Dear Oly.

I love this.

2010-01-10T00:18:00.001Z

"But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

"Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

"That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."

-David Foster Wallace, from this.

bonjour, bunny.

2010-01-08T10:28:00.002Z

Look who came to visit me. A very grumpy rabbit. Bonjour, bunny.

No dissertation work this week; I've been cleaning the house, doing lots of Poetry Series admin tasks that I put off last semester, sewing (of this, more photos here), writing a grant application. Oiling the cogs so that when I start to write next week I won't have anything else to worry about!

Still looking for people from everywhere (with a train or bus system) to help out with an upcoming print project; see this entry.

Happy weekend!

a list, and help required.

2010-01-06T23:46:00.002Z

Forgeries, masks, games, double agents (triple agents), clementines in the winter, granny-smiths in the summer, some Borges and Neruda, lots of wandering around Paris by myself, pretend mushrooms and plastic goldfish, nasturtium leaves (like dollhouse plates), red notebook, trains, a photobooth.

The lovely Belgian gave me a new camera for Christmas. The one I had, I'd had since 2002 and then it cost me about $70. It's not bad--it's fine for documentation--but it's about 2 megapixels (my mobile's camera is more powerful) and it doesn't like to focus and it eats batteries like candy. It is such a luxury to be able to take clear photographs, of high quality, and at a large size.

I'm thinking of where my prints will go and I think photography (and the rest of the list above) will be a big part.

I need volunteers from other places in the world who will take a photograph (I'll send instructions) and send me a used train ticket. Any takers?

good morning, it's january.

2010-01-04T13:07:00.003Z

New Year's resolutions: to be more flexible. To study Japanese again. To work on my poems every day and work on my dissertation every day. To go to the printshop every week and call my friends and family every week. To be positive, helpful, loving, and firm. To study all the time, and make beautiful things that I enjoy. And to know everything, which is tongue-in-cheek and gives me a reason to practice the rest of this list.

Do you have any?

I got more cashmere, but no white left, so this time will not be mushrooms but something else.

beautiful 2009 (12)

2009-12-31T15:50:00.000Z

I finish a draft of the introduction to my thesis and it feels good. With two other artists, I man an unheated stall in Nottingham for three days, thanking the universe for the invention of hot water bottles. I make a lot of presents. I go home, and then I go to Belgium. There's a lot of light.

beautiful 2009 (11)

2009-12-30T15:42:00.001Z

November:

I go back to Belgium, where very early mornings prove useful for my thesis: I write thousands of words before noon, and spend the afternoons before the Belgian is off work wandering around Gent with an exceptionally heavy backpack, grunting helplessly when strangers assume I speak Dutch. My Dutch improves incrementally. I hang out a lot with Sue, Sriparna, and Zalfa. We make up our own language. I have band practice, and we write a couple of songs which I then become too bashful to sing. I make Thanksgiving dinner for about 25 people, and the next day come downstairs to find water streaming down the wall wth my books. I observe two minutes' silence on the 11th, anti-papism on the 5th, and the elegant lines of staircases on the university campus.

beautiful 2009 (10)

2009-12-29T15:37:00.000Z

October:

I sew some patchwork covers for my ugly chairs. A piano arrives, all thanks to the magic of freecycle. Some of my friends help me celebrate my birthday with tea at Lee Rosy's, and I am touched by how thoughtful they are. We see the movie "Rumba" and go out for dinner afterwards. I take another trip to Belgium and meet some mushrooms in a forest. I go home and begin to sew my own. The Beligian comes, there's another Nottingham Poetry Series reading, and I get H1N1.

beautiful 2009 (9)

2009-12-28T15:30:00.000Z

September:

The Belgian and I spend a happy, magical day walking around London before he gets the train back to Gent for good. We have cake in a café and many serious, funny, and practical discussions. The Eurostar people are concerned by how much I'm crying. I can't explain that this is just my normal reaction to feeling anything, and no, I'm fine, it's all going to be ok. Back in Nottingham, I write a lot of poems about East Anglia and perfect my recipe for banana bread.

beautiful 2009 (8)

2009-12-27T15:26:00.000Z

August:

I move into my little house, with a lot of help from friends (including Melissa and the Belgian, who commandeer a shopping cart). I go to Leicester some more and print a lot of compound prints. I get offered teaching at the print workshop. The Belgian and I go on lots of walks. He tolerates my eternal taking of pictures. I tolerate his non-tea-drinking ways. I ignore the fact that I now have one year left to finish my PhD, and instead institute poetry meetings at my house once a week.

we wish you a mushroom christmas

2009-12-25T20:22:00.001Z

...and a fungi new year.

bright

2009-12-24T00:18:00.002Z

Finally, after a five-day delay (trains, buses, flights all delayed or cancelled), Minneapolis is beautiful, all my people are around me, and the Belgian awaits at the end of the month with promises of ice-skating and maybe a fire in the fireplace? Oh, and chocolate. (!) I hope there are equally nice things out there for you right now.